


Hope & Despair

by PetrichorPerfume



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester is Castiel's Home, Despair, Episode AU: s15e18 Despair, Episode: s15e18 Despair - Castiel's Confession Scene, Epistolary, Fix-It, Hope vs. Despair, Letters, Love Letters, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Episode S15e18 Despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27511648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: After Castiel's confession, Dean finds a way to bring his angel back to life.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 71





	1. A Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Well, you know I had to write a fix-it fic.

Castiel, for all his failings, had never been one to leave things to chance.

It occurred to Dean sometime between his second shot of tequila and his third finger of whiskey that maybe, just maybe, Castiel would find his way back to him, if not through the dark and the void and the stars and the vastness between them, then through words.

He made his way to Castiel’s room, reeling past a hollow-looking Sam and Jack, who was still recovering from his exertions.

No one dared to speak to him, after the magnitude of what they’d done, and lost, and seen.

None, save Castiel, who spoke to Dean from beyond the grave in every possible way – Castiel, whose scent hit Dean like a shooting star as he made his way to the other’s bed – the bed they could have shared, the bed they would now never share, the bed he longed to press Castiel down onto and – and, well, it was too late for that, too late to lament the pettiness and the smallness of his dreams.

Every inch of the room spoke to him in dulcet tones, singing of Castiel, both his presence and his absence. Here was the mixtape Dean had gifted him, in a place of honor on the mantle. There, a spare tie, blue as the sky and bluer still. Some dress shirts, folded in the corner. The closet, ever so slightly ajar. An upturned corner of a sheet, an impression left in the middle of the bed. Dean imaged Castiel praying, then wished he hadn’t, because suddenly, he was on his knees before the bed, elbows resting in the wrinkles where Castiel had sat, on the verge of weeping.

“I don’t know if you can hear me where you are,” he said, slowly, eyes filling with tears. “I don’t know if it matters – you said… You said saying it was enough. Is saying it… Enough? Or is it too late?”

Dean bowed his head. “I’m saying it anyway. I’m saying I love you. I don’t care if it’s too late. I love you; I love you. I always have, and now…”

A strange shuffling noise made him break off his prayer. Hope flared in his chest, a wild, fragile thing, but it shattered when he turned around.

Castiel wasn’t there. Of course, he wasn’t there.

But a drawer of the desk was ajar, now, where it had been lying flush against the wood just a moment before.

A certain sort of desperation overtook Dean. He had no real memory of his feet carrying him to the desk, but suddenly he was pulling open the drawer.

The empty drawer. Hope was a dangerous thing, Dean decided.

He stood his hands coming up to wipe his tears from his face, but one last wild hope of a dream of a wish stuttered to life inside him.

The drawer, as he suspected, had a false bottom. Underneath it was a flurry of letters, each dated and sealed.

Smiling through the tears, he read.


	2. A Dream

My Dearest Dean,

There is no need to despair.

I have never feared for my own life. I want you to know that if I have died in the place of someone I love, then my death will have been a welcome one.

My one fear is that I will have died without telling you how much you are loved, and by none more than me.

So, let me say it now. And forgive me, if you can, for hiding my love for you in the false bottom of an empty drawer. Forgive me, if you can, for not telling you sooner.

Because I love you, Dean. I love you like kindling loves fire, like the ocean loves the shore, like the moon loves the world when she is full of joy and light and life.

If I have lived, it is only through you.

If I have achieved any manner of greatness, if I have known beauty or joy; if I have done anything worthy or worthwhile in this life, if I have seen the forest for more than the trees, it has been for the love of you.

My love, I am aware I will never know how your lips taste; I know I have done too much to be forgiven in your eyes; I know that you will never love me as I love you.

But I know your soul. I know its goodness, and I know what it’s like to cherish you from afar. I know you inside and out, I know your flaws and I know your perfections and I have spent many hours in prayer enumerating each and every one of the things that make you – you.

The world is a strange and beautiful place, Dean.

And if I have learned anything from you, it’s this: love is like the unconquered sun; it gives you light, it keeps you warm, and it always, always shows you the way home.

Yours,

Castiel

~

Dean spent the next hours in a trance, poring through years of letters – all of them addressed to him – confessions, entreaties, prayers; holy relics, all of them.

And when he was done, he did not weep, but rather rose and stretched, then settled himself at the desk and began to write.


	3. A Wish

Dear Castiel,

I don’t have your way with words.

But I love you nevertheless.

I should have said it sooner.

I shouldn’t have let you think you were alone in your love, because you weren’t.

We two – you and me, against the world – we were star-crossed, destined to keep falling in and out of each other’s orbit. I loved you like a man loves his savior, his angel; this holy being, descended from the heavens just to strike strange, echoing chords in his heart.

I wish I could offer you the stars. I wish I could give you shelter and love and a place in my heart and by my side.

But all I have are these words, and I hope they reach you, somehow.

Yours,

Dean

~

Dean wasn’t sure what kept his hand scrawling across the page as he wrote, wasn’t sure what spirit of mourning possessed him as he went out back and set the letter afire.

He couldn’t pinpoint what made him build a pyre, and set it alight, nor could he tell you what, precisely, happened as the fire was dwindling– only that in the space of time it took to blink, Castiel was burning in effigy, and then he was rising like a phoenix from the ashes, stumbling, unharmed, into the fading light of day, and straight into Dean’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think~


End file.
